Telefonica Moviles Completes Chile Mobile Telcom Merger

SANTIAGO -(Dow Jones)- Madrid-based mobile communications firm Telefonica Moviles (TEM) completed the merger of the Chilean firms it acquired last year, Telefonica Movil and Bellsouth, the telecom said in a statement Thursday.

Some 200 people, or 10% of the total workforce, were let go or retired as part of the mobile operators' integration, a spokesman for the company said.

The merged company now has the dominant mobile telecommunications market position, with about 4.6 million clients.

Telefonica Moviles plans to unite the two companies under one brand name before the second half of the year, the spokesman said.

In 2004, Telefonica Moviles paid $1 billion to take control of Chile's No. 2 mobile phone company, Telefonica Movil Chile, just a few months after it spent $5.85 billion for BellSouth Corp.'s (BLS) Latin American assets.

Telefonica Moviles is a unit of Spain's Telefonica (TEF).

Company Web site: http://www.telefonicamoviles.com

-By Carolina Pica; Dow Jones Newswires; 562-460-8544; carolina.pica@dowjones.com

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Posted to the site on 17th February 2005